Untitled

SUNDRUM - TUNABLE TONGUE DRUM
Warning: CHOKING HAZARD – small Parts/neodynium magnets
Not for children under 3 years old.
The idea
for the SUNDRUM came to me from many different
directions and it all started in 2008 when I inspired of a video
about a Domenican instrument builder called Felle Vega started
to make my first tank drum. I soon discovered that many people
where experimenting with tankdrums but that most of them
made pentatonic ones similar to for example the Hapi drum.
I also was inspired of the african Kora and it´s percussive playing
technique where scales are played between the two hands and I
wanted to create a percussion instrument where I could use my
different percussion finger techniques to play melodic patternts.
Since I as a percussionist was longing for playing more and more
melodic/harmonic stuff and not only rythmic.
Please keep the magnets away from kids since they can be very
dangerous to play with.
Playing Sundrum
The sound of steel tongue drums is very beautiful and the
sustain very long. This makes it more suitable for slow, ringing
pentatonic playing, while faster diatonic playing
demands shorter sustain so the notes doesn´t
blend together too much and creates disonance
between the ringing notes. So my thoughts soon
went to the wood I use for my reknown Congaand Batá Cajons. I started to experiment with that
and soon I had a working prototype with very nice
dry “earthy” wood sound.
Now the tuning work started and the shaping
of the body to find the right dimentions. I soon
understood that it would be very useful to find a
way to make a tunable tongue drum to be able
to play in different keys So I spent a lot of time
testing different ways of tuning and in 2012 I got the idea for the now Patent Pending Magnetic Tuning System.
The Tuning System
is very easy to
manage and requires no tools at all. It comprises
a pair of magnets that slides in a slot on the
tongue. Sliding them back and forth the mass of
the tongue changes and so does the frequency.
The Sundrum has
and each of
them has a tuning range of more or less a whole
octave. This Is ground breaking since other
tunable steel tongue drums can in most cases
only be fine tuned (approx. 2-5 semi notes).
12 tongues
magnets
The
are strong enough to stay in place
while playing but if you play too hard with your
hand or with to heavy mallets they might jump
off.
When they jump off they usually attach to
another magnet inside and you will have to locate it and take it out and put it together with
the outer magnet again. This is the most tricky thing with the Sundrum, but you will learn
how to do it after a while. Another reason to not play the tongues too hard is that they
sound best when you play with ther right strength. You will hear when they start to distort
and that´s when you´ve passed the limit. So listen to the instuments and it will tell you
when you play hard enonugh. I´ve never experienced that a tongue breaks so you don´t
need to worry about that, but of course every piece of wood has it´s limits of durability also
even if these tongues are made by 6 layer water boil proof birch plywood.
If the inner magnet gets lost on side the instrument you need another magnet to take it
out. Just try to locate it by sweeping the other magnet around the bottom of the instrument
and when they connect you drag it up carefully towards the hole. If you drag it to close
to another tuning magnet it will stick to them and you will have to unmount that pair to
separate them and put back the two pairs agan.
We will make a instruction video about how to do this asap. So please check our website
frequently for updates!
Slide the
magnet up and
down along the
S-shaped slot
to tune the
tongue.
Tune down by
bringning the
magnet closer to the
tip of the tongue - Tune
up bringing it away from
the tip.
is easy
and fun! But it might seem a little tricky
in the beginning and it helps if you are
familiar with other hand drumming since
you can use all types of hand drumming
techniques from indian tabla and frame
drum split hand techniques to conga/
djembe style (but softer than if you
would play on a conga/djembe)
= PLAY on this
position of the
tongue with
mallets or
fingers.
1
3
5
2
4
PLAY rising
scale from
longest
tongue
alternating
left and right
hand towards
the
shortest
tongue
7
The most important thing you need to
6
know is that if your finger/hand stay
on the tongue it will not vibrate, so you
9
8
need to bounce off the tongue imme11
diately after striking. It might be easier
10
12
to make it sound good with mallets for
beginners but I asure that it´s worth
practising with the hands/fingers since
it opens up more playing posibilities and
a much bigger variety of sounds. To get
the basic sound of each tonge you have to strike in the red marked area of each tonge in the
picture.
We recommend to have the shortest tongue towards your body but of course it´s possible
to turn it in any direction.
Start practicing with your index fingers up and down the scale to find the sound without
dampening the tongues.
You can also use your thumb and other fingers to play two or three tongues with one hand
or use your whole hand to get bass drum like sounds similar of that of a kalebass if you have
it connected to a PA system. Playing closer to the outer edge of the Sundrum will give more
overtones to the timbre of each tonge. So there´s a lot to explore. We hope you´ll enjoy
getting to know the Sundrum!
Tuning the Sundrum
is easy and we recommend that you learn tune it by
ear. The sustain is a little short to be captured by electronic tuner devices but you can use
them if you continuosly play one tongue at a time or if you just sing the note and try to find
the right pitch that way. You can download a tuner app to your smart phone and use it for
tuning. A piano or a piano app on your smart phone is maybe a even better way to tune it.
Since
is so big (comparing to other
tongue drums - G1-C4) there are many different scales you can choose. And we recommend
the tonal range of the Sundrum
down tuning the whole drum or staring from the lowest and go upwards. A string instument
or a piano can also be a good help if you want to tune it to a specific scale.
The design
of the sundrum is the result of years of testing and prototyping. The
positioning and pattern of the tongues
gives maximal amount of notes and
the bigest tonal range on the market of
tongue drums in a very compact and light
weigted nice looking instrument. Due to
it´s compact size it´s fysically impossible
to amplify the deepest bass tones acustically and as all accoustic instruments
needs amplification in live situations
we choosed to offer the sundrum with
specially designed mic system.
Two different Mic Systems
12 individual piezo mics
There are
available for the sundrum. - one
contact mic system with
and one Condenser mic
system. The Piezo mic system gives a strong clear signal and captures the body of each
note with lots of bass and mid with low risk for feedback. As all piezo mic systems our Piezo
Systrem doesn´t capture the full presenece/treble/ so we recommend that you use a good
condenser mic as a compliment when you record or performe live with the Sundrum. An
external mic can though be difficult to place close enough for live performans since it will
disturb your playing.
That´s why we choosed to ad another
inside the
Sundrum. This mic captures everything from 50Hz up to 20.000Hz and the frequency
response is very even over the whole range. So the combinations of these two mic systems
gives a powerful reporduction of the whole sound of the insturment and even more since
the piezo gives a very deep punchy kick sound when you hit with the whole hand over the
“sun hole”. (a sound that is not heard acoustically)
Condenser mic System
Having the two mics you will need two channels in a mixerboard - one with phantom power
for the condenser and one line for the piezo. You can also use a
external blender pedal for accustic guitar (there are a few different
on the market).
We recommend the ZOOM A3 pedal
for
this purpouse! This device has one phantom powered XLR input and
one Jack input for the piezo and it has lots of nice effects as compressor, reverb, delay, chorus and equalizers, and last but not least,
the ingenious FEED BACK CANCELLATION which automatically
eliminates the frequency feed backing by just one push of a botton.
We Hope you will enjoy this instrument as much as we do and we wich you a lot of fun and
we would be happy to hear your feed back on it som please feel
free to post a comment on our Face Book Page!
Please also post a video with your music created on the Sundrum and help us spreading the word about this new insturment!
Thank you for choosing a Valter Percussion instrument and
thereby investing in the development
CHECK VIDEO HERE:
of many interesting future percussion
products!
www.valterpercussion.com